Monthly Archives:

I’m so glad to be at home to spend time with family and my two
kitties, Cookie and Pickles, for a well-deserved break after a long
semester! I’m also looking forward to the wedding of my best
friend, Lauren, at the end of this month!
Although the semester felt long while we were in it, it actually
passed by pretty quickly. I truly enjoyed this past semester,
as third year is all about learning the medicine, getting exposure
to clinics, and practicing clinical skills, as well as being able
to take electives that we are personally interested in. So
many milestones were achieved this semester, including performing
my first spay on a sweet little Dachshund named Truffles and
working on an intestinal anastomosis (in other words, cutting out a
section of dead bowel and stitching the remaining viable sections
together), learning to distinguish between a cough caused by
respiratory disease versus a cough caused by heart failure, and
b...
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Howdy! First off, let me say how excited I am to be on winter
break right now and how proud I am to say I'm officially 3/8 of a
DVM! Finals flew by really quickly, and it is so nice to not have
to worry about studying for a little while. Looking back, I
definitely learned a lot this semester, and am really excited for
the spring semester.
I think what I'm looking forward to most is getting my surgery
pack and starting our Junior surgery class. We will start learning
about suture patterns, sterile techniques, and everything else we
need to actually start performing surgeries in third year. But for
now, I am just relaxing, working on getting my Christmas shopping
done, and getting ready to see all of my family during the holiday.
My goal for every break we have is to enjoy it and recharge so I am
ready to go for the next semester. Have a great break, everyone,
and stay safe!
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Good luck to all the undergraduates who are taking finals this
week. I know everybody is excited and ready to begin winter break,
but we only have two days left and probably are going to get no
sleep, so push through it!
Today I wanted to talk about the interview process for those in
BIMS looking to go to medical school. I recently went on a medical
school interview and it was a great experience to see the campus
and get to see that all the hard work is worth the time and effort.
I interviewed in El Paso, Texas at the Paul L. Foster School of
Medicine and the school was amazing. You can be apprehensive about
the location, but the city is larger than I expected and, as I
found out, it is the safest metropolitan city in the state. For
those who do not know about the medical school, it is the newest
one in Texas and just graduated its first class this past May. The
school had 100% of its students matched for residency, which is
amazing.
My firs...
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I'm writing this blog while relaxing with about 40 other vet
students after a brutal week of finals. Finals is the time of year
when everything you looked at and said "I don't need to learn that"
comes back at you full force. As a vet student, there are more than
just animals that can bite you. The term cumulative sends chills up
your spine. Finals are one of the most challenging aspects of
veterinary school. Life was bliss in undergrad when you just needed
to make a grade in the course and get through it. With veterinary
school it is important to remember what you've learned in previous
years; it all builds.
The first semester of third year was exhilarating and
exhausting. Third year students performed survival surgeries and
entered the clinics for the first time. Our schedules were full of
countless hours of lectures and labs. It is astounding to look back
and reflect on how much we've learned in 2.5 years. We started
first year with an under...
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As the semester approaches its end, the only thing on my mind is
finals! This semester has certainly had its highs and lows, but I
am proud to say I have at least managed to maintain my grades. One
of the most important things I’ve learned while at A&M is that
everyone has the opportunity to succeed during their sojourn here.
"Good grades" may not always come easily but they WILL come if a
continuous effort is made. Each semester that passes just means one
semester closer to graduation, anyhow. To be honest, that is what
keeps me going.
So amidst the stress of tests, and with the pressure of doing my
best constantly on my mind, I am happy to say that the semester’s
end is near and we students will finally be able to enjoy the break
we so readily deserve!
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The end of the semester is only a few weeks away. The vet
school starts finals in less than a week, and undergraduates’ exams
are a few days later. This means less sleep, and that more
caffeine will be consumed, just to gain a few more hours of
valuable study time. However, if students use their time
wisely leading up to exams, there will be no lack of sleep, and
they will be rested for the finals.
Unlike high school students, college and professional school
students have one or possibly two tests a day during finals
week. If there are more than three tests scheduled, students
can ask the professor to take the test at a different time to help
space everything out. There is also “dead” week or day, which
is a week of no class, to allow more time to study. It might
be easier in undergraduate classes to study the night before the
test, but it is necessary in vet school to study more than just the
night before.&n...
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It is hard to believe that another semester has
flown by, and I am preparing to take my final exams. It is even
harder to believe that in January, I will begin my last semester of
classes before starting clinical rotations in May. I remember
so clearly spending time in the anatomy lab first semester of my
first year, wishing I was closer to the end so I could actually
work on live animals.
This semester has been a great transition from
classroom time to more hands-on activities. For the first two years
of vet school, we learn an incredible amount of material, but it is
really in the third and fourth years that we can begin to apply
it. This year, Large Animal Medicine and Small Animal
Medicine have been two of the primary courses. In these
classes, we learn how to apply our knowledge in a clinical setting
to diagnose and treat patients. While some of what we learn
has already been taught, the material is presented in a p...
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Howdy Ags! I hope everyone’s semester is going well! I can’t
believe the semester is almost over. Only a few weeks left and then
we are finished! Yay!
On another note, I want to tell you about the Diagnostic Imaging and Cancer
Treatment Center, or DICTC, which is located between the small
and large animal hospitals here at the Texas A&M College of
Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. A few weeks ago, I
was lucky enough to take a tour of this amazing facility.
Unfortunately, as ambassadors we can’t take the public into the
facility due to the use of radioactive material in administering
radiation treatments for our cancer patients, so I wanted to give
you some information about what goes on under the roof of the
DICTC.
The DICTC houses 3 major machines. The first is a Tomotherapy
unit, an amazing machine used to treat cancer. The college is lucky
enough to house the only Tomotherapy unit in the nation big enough
for use on large...
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Over the course of this semester, my classmates and I have had
the opportunity to get hands-on experience practicing basic
clinical skills with a variety of species in our weekly clinical
correlates class. Every Friday we have a different rotation,
so by the end of the semester we will have handled birds,
tortoises, goats, and cattle. It has been nice to have a fun
activity (with animals!) awaiting me at the end of each week.
My first rotation was a lecture on low-stress handling of cats,
which was given by a technician who works in the Feline Internal
Medicine ward our Small Animal Hospital. Staff members in the
hospital have committed to creating a calm environment for our
feline patients and therefore practice handling techniques that are
quiet and gentle. The "old school" approach to handling cats
for veterinary care was basically a one-size-fits-all approach that
was overboard for the cats that weren't going to be di...
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These past few weeks have been all kinds of hectic. Between
tests, organizations, and life in general, the planning of what
courses we want to take next semester has begun. Except you can’t
just plan what courses you’ll take next semester (as I naively
thought my freshman year when doing this for the first time): you
have to plan, in addition, the next, next semester and sometimes
even the next, next, next semester. It’s all about that four-year
plan.
So in doing my course planning, a topic came up that has thrown
my whole life for a loop this past couple of weeks: study abroad.
As many of you know, while getting your biomedical sciences
undergraduate degree, you have the additional option of also
getting your Spanish certification. One of the requirements for the
certification is a study abroad experience (in a Spanish-speaking
country, of course). Since freshman year, I had been planning on
going to Costa Rica, and doing the same program so m...
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